The Bearers of Effective Chirstianity ...

LISTING #5.  RELEVANT TO YOU - ESOTERIC?
      continuation from 4

[Top conclusion, #2] "Tradition for the prophets, Apostles, and Fathers is not much different from tradition within today's scientific societies.[4]"
      The society of true Faith are preserving a cure for that which ails mankind. Based on results, their presuppositions concerning the nature and purpose of man along with the identity and reality of God are confirmed.

"They (who have experienced glorification) are the chief bearers of the tradition of the therapy of the noetic faculty.[5]"
      Those who carry and pass on the cure for humanity have reached the highest of five levels of true Christianity. The qualifying level is an expected, well documented, and verifiable state.

"Normative therapists are those who not only have the unceasing prayer of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, but who have also experienced glorification in this life.[1]"
      The chief bearers of effective Christianity are not dealing with a pie-in-the-sky after-life religion but with an eternal state of an experiential faith that starts now.

"Neither the Bible nor the Fathers consider glorification as an experience only for life after death[2]."
      That form of humanism that denies the overwhelming evidence and reporting by godly men throughout history must be considered to be a religion rather than a science.

"The cause of the reunion of Christendom may be served by getting scientists involved in the study of" curing the noetic faculty[1].".
      Comparing the statistics of those psychologically treated by both psychiatry and true Christianity, a non-prejudiced honest person would have to admit the presence of a positive science within Christianity. Even the effective modern-day twelve step program for alcoholics was originally adapted from a Christian program.

"The very existence of the noetic faculty and its functioning or non-functioning cannot be the concern of theologians alone, indeed, its cure makes the tradition which knows how to bring this about more of a positive science than psychiatry in its present form[3]."
      The concern and often times hidden fear that people have concerning death is the reason Christianity's time-proved addiction-breaking solutions are dismissed and sidelined as a religion.

"Perhaps one can methodologically separate the experience of the Holy Spirit's prayer in the heart from concern for life after death for the purpose of treating this phenomenon in conjunction with those sciences related to the medical profession[2]."
      The therapeutic aspects of Christianity are so effective because they are based on a physical and psychological verifiable reality that something has been fixed inside the individual. Adjustments have taken place that effect the heart, brain, and central nerves system.

[Top conclusion, #1] "Consistency with the Pauline, early Christian, and patristic understanding of Jesus Christ as the Life of the World, should require that one approach the subject from the side of empirical or experiential theology which overlaps with the therapeutic sciences[4]."
      We are at least talking about voluntary behavior modification which reaches toward a specific goal that is confirmable when reached, with plenty of mile markers and instruction from those who have already arrived and returned from that Goal.           

"The gift itself of unceasing prayer in the heart and glorification (theosis) has never ceased being understood as the core of the tradition (of the Saints) from the time of the Old Testament prophets" until this very day[5].
     Because we have the New Testament and record of the Apostles without the institutional form, discipline, and slant of the early Church; we imagine that the miraculous feats they performed were the main point and miss that the Faith and its methodology was carefully preserved and passed on effectively. Church history records other flourishes of the miraculous signs when there was a providential need.

"It is clear that the attitude had fully developed (by the fifth century) that the apostles were in a class all by themselves so that in comparison with theirs, the surviving gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Church are of a lower order[2]."
      The basic charismata of Christianity has never been absent from the Faith down to our very day. Improper definitions and identifications of spiritual gifts and their relationship to true Christians have paralleled the difference between those with the real cure and those turning speculation about the real cure into a religion.



.... CONTINUED FROM THE PREVIOUS LISTING ...
[1]. Search for any partial string between any set of quotation marks to follow my sources.
[2]. ALL MY SOURCES ARE ON LINE.
[3]. All My Sources Are On Line.
[4]. All My Sources Are On Line.
[1-5]. John S. Romanides, Romanity.org